Daily Inspiration: Gifts from the Refugees

This feature is coordinated by The Post-Standard and InterFaith Works of CNY.

Helen Malina

On May 6, InterFaith Works will celebrate their annual Leadership Award Dinner with a new twist. Each year, the event honors the significant contributions of community leaders of many faiths for their gifts to the greater Syracuse community. This year, InterFaith Works will honor the process of refugee resettlement, and 10 refugees who have been invited here to begin new chapters in their book of life, and now, give us their gifts of courage, grace, compassion, and industry.

As one of two refugee resettlement directors in Syracuse, I lead the InterFaith Works' Center for New Americans, where I am blessed to work daily with these remarkable ambassadors of human courage, faith, and family resilience, and also with a most passionately committed staff, many of whom are former refugees. In addition, our corps of volunteers never ceases to astound me with their devotion, insight, and ingenuity on behalf of refugees.

But, this humanitarian work is important for all of us. My colleague in resettlement, Keith Cooper, a businessman from Rhode Island whose company, Beautiful Day, makes granola products with refugees, expressed this powerfully when he said, "...it's essential for our communities to engage actively and concretely with the suffering that is destroying lives and parts of our world. While bearing witness can both honor and protest suffering, seeing without responding can also make us callous or nihilistic or afraid or depressed. ...refugee resettlement extends an invitation towards clearer moral vision, empathy, humility and hope. Resettlement invites us to go beyond the evening news. Resettlement is real people losing all then building new lives here...where we can meet as real people - our neighborhood(s)."

This week, I will share some of these interactions which dignify, humanize, and heal. It's funny how the process often goes both ways!

Helen Malina is Director of the InterFaith Works Center for New Americans, a refugee resettlement program. She is a member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, New York.